Fleur Ravensbergen is a guest lecturer at the SSE Academy. Drawing on her extensive experience with international silent diplomacy, she tells the participants of SOM Professional about the role of personal leadership in her work. How you can be happy that a negotiating party calls back, or because the outcome of a meeting is that there will be a follow-up meeting.
Fleur has now brought together her experiences with disarmament and peace negotiations in a personal book titled ‘Disarmed’She describes the background of several negotiations she has conducted in recent years from the Dialogue Advisory Group (DAG) and the impact on her own life and the lives of her family. DAG is a small NGO based in Amsterdam, an independent foundation that sends peace mediators to conflict zones. The world is their field of operation: ETA in the Basque Country, IRA in Ireland, IS in Iraq, much in Africa.
The negotiation situations Fleur describes are a far cry from the reality faced by an environmental manager. Although emotions can run high in the Netherlands as well, and many environmental managers have at times felt threatened by a stakeholder, DAG’s negotiations are, by definition, fraught with tension, and the negotiating parties are unpredictable. ‘Disarmed’ describes the personal experience of Fleur Ravensbergen, a constantly shifting game board where conviction, perseverance, patience, leadership, fear, disappointment, and relief vie with one another. And then back home, knowing that the next crisis urgently calls for a strictly neutral intervention. That is precisely why the book is so interesting for community managers: what role do you play as a community manager? How do you deal with tension and a lack of trust? What about your perseverance and patience? These are questions this book raises, and ones each of us can reflect on personally. That is precisely why ‘Ontwapend’ is a disarming book and a must-read.
